The Not-So-Historic Talabani-Barak Handshake

A Kodak Moment: The Not-So-Historic
Talabani-Barak Handshake

Most people would not have even
realised that the 23rd congress of the Socialist
International was being held near Athens were it not for the
moment when Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak shook the
hand of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

An Associated
Press report, published in the Israeli daily Haaretz, dubbed
the handshake "historic". History was supposedly made in
Athens on 1 July 2008. Centred in a photo, featuring a
widely grinning Barak and Talabani, is Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas, who was credited for introducing
the two.

The three individuals involved are members of
political establishments that are largely funded and
sustained by the US government. Both Abbas and Talabani are
at the helm of puppet political structures that lack
sovereignty or political will of their own, and are entirely
reliant on scripts drafted in full or in part by the Bush
administration.

As for Israel, which enjoys a more
equitable relationship with the United States, normalisation
with the Arabs is something it covets and tirelessly
promotes, granted that such normalisation doesn't involve
ending its occupation of the Palestinian territories, or any
other concessions.

One might suggest the happenstance
handshake and very brief meeting was not accidental at all.
This is what Haaretz wrote, rewording Barak's comments on
the handshake. He "said that Israel wished to extend its
indirect peace talks with Syria to cover Iraq as well." That
was a major political declaration by Israel -- one surely
aimed at further isolating Iran, as Israel's newest moves
regarding Syria, Lebanon and Gaza clearly suggest. But the
fact is Israel's ever-careful leaders could make no such
major political announcement without intense deliberation
and consensus in the Israeli government prior to the
"accidental" handshake.

Talabani owes Barak more than a
reciprocal handshake; a heartfelt thank you is in order for
his newly found fortunes as Iraq's sixth president starting
in 2005. Indeed, over time, pointing the finger at Israel's
leading role in the Iraq war -- as it's now being replayed
in efforts to strike Iran -- has morphed from being a
recurring discussion of writers and analysts outside the
mainstream media, to US government and army officials.

In
a recent commentary, US writer Paul J Balles brings to the
fore some of these major declarations, including those of
Senator Ernest Hollings (May 2004) who "acknowledged that
the US invaded Iraq 'to secure Israel', and 'everybody knows
it.'" Retired four-star US army general and former NATO
Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark is another: "Those who
favour this attack (against Iraq) now will tell you
candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that
Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they
are afraid at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear
weapon to use it against Israel," he was quoted in The
Independent as saying.

In his recent review of Michael
Scheuer's Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam after
Iraq, Jim Miles wrote, "It is not so much the Israeli lobby
itself that he [Scheuer] criticises, but the
'Israeli-firsters', those of the elite who whole-heartedly
adopt the cause of Israel as the cause of America. He
describes them as 'dangerous men... seeking to place de
facto limitations on the First Amendment to protect the
nation of their primary attachment [Israel]."

Scheuer, an
ex-CIA agent who primarily worked on gathering information
on Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, wrote in his book, "to
believe that relationship is not only a burden but a cancer
on America's ability to protect its genuine national
interests... equates to either anti- Semitism or a lack of
American patriotism."

Not only is Israel directly and
indirectly responsible for a large share of the war efforts
(needless to say media propaganda and hyped "intelligence"
on Iraq's non-existing nuclear programme), but it also had
much to say and do following the fall of the Iraqi
government in March 2003.

In a comprehensive study
entitled "The US War on Iraq: Yet Another Battle To Protect
Israeli Interests?" published in the Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs in October 2003, Delinda C Hanley
discussed Israel's involvement following the invasion of
Iraq. The article poses an important question, among others:
did Bush's Israel-first advisers invade Iraq in order to
assure that Israel would have easy access to oil? -- a
question that is not predicated on a hunch, but rather
statements made by top Israeli officials, including the
country's national infrastructure minister at the time
Joseph Paritzky, who "suggested that after Saddam Hussein's
departure, Iraqi oil could flow to the Jewish state, to be
consumed or marketed from there." A 31 March 2003 article in
Haaretz reported on plans to "reopen a long-unused pipeline
from Iraq's Kirkuk oil fields to the Israeli port of
Haifa."

Israel's interest in Kirkuk's oil, and thus Iraqi
Kurds, didn't merely manifest itself in economic profits,
but extended far beyond. Seymour M Hersh wrote in The New
Yorker, 21 June 2004: "Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
government decided... to minimise the damage that the war
was causing to Israel's strategic position by expanding its
long-standing relationship with Iraq's Kurds and
establishing a significant presence on the ground in the
semi- autonomous region of Kurdistan... Israeli intelligence
and military operatives are now quietly at work in
Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units
and, most important in Israel's view, running covert
operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and
Syria."

Perhaps Talabani is the president of Iraq, but he
is also the founder and secretary-general of the major
Kurdish political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK). His advocacy for Kurdish political sovereignty spans
a period of five decades. Thus, it is also difficult to
believe that the influential leader didn't know of Israel's
presence and involvement in northern Iraq. Ought one to
understand the Athens handshake as a public acknowledgment
and approval of that role?

To suggest that the
Barak-Talabani handshake was "historic" is completely
unfounded, if not ignorant. What deserves scrutiny is why
the governments of Tel Aviv and the Green Zone decided to
upgrade their gestures of "good will" starting in 2003 to a
public handshake. Is it a test balloon or is there a more
"historic" and public agreement to
follow?

*************

-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor
of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in
many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is
The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's
Struggle (Pluto Press,
London).

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